Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Last week I was invited to speak at my alma mater, Indiana University Bloomington. I was honored to be invited and absolutely thrilled at the chance to come back to IU to visit some of my old haunts (Runcible spoon and Rockits pizza). The symposium itself was a blast. Liz and I met a lot of great young artists from different schools across the midwest. We also had a great time taking part in the workshops and enjoyed a lot of the other lectures. I regret not taking part in the round table discussion but I couldn't help getting swept away in the nostalgia. By the end Liz was sick of me being the tour guide. "Thats where I taught 3D foundations!" "We just drove by my old apartment!" "I used to come here for pancakes." My conference experience was very intimate I had a chance to talk to a lot of students and actually have real conversations with them. Liz also had an opportunity to ask a lot of them of what they thought of grad school and how things were going. Being able to tour the Kinsey Institute and visit the Lily Library to see an actual Gutenberg bible was a treat. Honestly, there was a lot to do and really not enough time to do it all. It was also nice to visit my old bench back in the grad studio and to visit McCalla school where I spent a lot of my time. I would also like to thank the IU metals students, Randy and Nicole for such a wonderful experience. They worked so hard to make all of this happen and it showed.I will be participating/attending/demoing at this years ECU symposium. It will be interesting to see how the two compare. The exhibitions where incredible. Shift, was a great opportunity to see so many great artist's work in person. The layout was well planned. Not too crowded and not too spaced out. Often having that much jewelry in one room would mean total chaos but this worked on multiple levels. I also enjoyed seeing new work from Don Friedlich (3D printed glass!!), Iris Eichenberg and Kristen Haydon. I also appreciated that they decided to use the ipad to display video throughout the exhibition Two in particular were Melanie Bilenker placing her bits of hair and Gabriel Craig raising awareness. The show itself was intimidating being that there was so much work, but not unapproachable. I was also interesting to see a range of work in the show. There were a number of sculptural pieces that were more about jewelry and its relationship to the body. Caroline Gore's piece Mercurial Silence dominated this category, taking up the entire back wall of the gallery (detail shot above). I am often impressed with the level of craftsmanship that metalsmiths put into crafting other objects. The large "findings" on her wood pieces and the attention to the larger black "pearls" were impressive. I was also impressed with Crush II, an exhibition curated by two IU alum, Sara Brown and Galatea Kontos. Filled with a number of great pieces from jewelers like Iris Bobemer, Julia Turner, Tara Locklear, Bob Ebendorf and Heejim Hwang just to name a few. I was pleased to be able to actually purchase a piece (fingers crossed). Collect was a collection from a local collector. There were some Alma Eikerman pieces there, which were nice to see in person. When I first arrived on campus it was so strange to think that eight years ago I was smoking cigarettes with other grad students and working all hours into the night trying to find my way through school. I have so many great memories of IU where I really felt I was given an opportunity to be creative and all of the support to be able to do anything I wanted. Ahhhhh the memories. I also had some opportunities to create some new memories having long talks with Michael Dale Bernard, Tara Locklear, Sim Luttin, Linda Hughes and Yevegenia Kaganovich. Enough cheese! Here are some photos from the trip. Also if you are in the area go see these shows!